Development of Nutrient Profiles in the European Union

Nowadays, there is a debate in the European Union about the development and use of different nutrient profile methods, claims, and front-of-pack labelling to help consumers make more informed choices to maintain wellbeing during daily life and protect public health by setting limits on certain nutrients, such as salt, sugar, and fat, while encouraging the consumption of beneficial nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals . In the context of European Union (EU) legislation, the development of nutrient profiles (NP) aims to provide the scientific basis for evaluating nutrition and health claims and regulating the marketing and advertising of foods to children, but able to be addressed for all the population . The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union issued the first specific provisions in December 2006 with Regulation (EC) No. 1924/2006 “on nutrition and health claims made on foods”, mentioning the need to establish specific nutrient profiles (Whereas 10,11,12 and Article 4, para. 1 and 2) for the EU. It refers to the establishment of criteria that define the nutritional composition of foods and beverages, to rate the nutritional quality of individual foods, based on their nutrient composition, and to create a categorization of foods to define if a foodstuff is able to bear a health claim . Since then, some nutrient profile models have been proposed, e.g. the Nutrient profile model issued by the WHO Regional Office for Europe nutrient profile model, but a clear and harmonized approach to the legislation is still not available in the EU . Moreover, the development of nutrient profiles is directly related to labels that could be used as front-of-pack labelling for nutritional information, e.g. Nutriscore and Nutrinform. This also represents a further topic in which the European Union is working to find a harmonized approach. Therefore, the objective of this master thesis is to try to provide a clear vision of the regulatory framework of nutrient profiles in the European Union. This study is done taking into account the hottest topics debated in the EU and based on the interest of the author as a master student in Food and Health, to provide perspectives on the link between nutrition and information on food products for consumers, and to update the legislation on food labelling, nutritional, and health claims, specifically on nutrient profile, in order to promote healthy choices for consumers. This thesis is organized into different chapters with a review of the existing sources.